On Lou Dobbs the latest poll quesionned whether negative ads worked. 100 percent of the people polled said yes. Where are the rapid response team like Clinton/Gore had to shoot down all this distortion? They need an infusion of something or this is going to be their election to lose.

multi-nation talks with Pyongyang and trying to commit our allies to a multi-year international war against terror

To be fair, I believe they had a surrogate talk about the troops plan in relation to North Korea(Clark I think it was). But you are right, they need to challenge Bush on his plans to stop terrorism.
Pandagon.com has a post, "Right On, O'Reilly", where Bill O'Reilly denounces SVBT and defends John Kerry's war record. so at least there are two Republicans, O'Reilly and McCain, coming out against this. Plus, MoveOn will be airing ads questioning Bush's war service in WI, OH, and WV(the same place SVBT's ads aired).

Agree, Kerry sounded like just said anything that was opposite of Bush. He blew it.

Well, maybe the gloves are coming off when we least expect it. Kerry is going to be campaigning the week of the republi-con convention.

Say, Steve, I'm pleased to see that you agree with me that Kerry's opposition to Bush's redeployment plans is nothing but partisan contrarianism. But this idea that we need to immediately redeploy these troops to Iraq is faulty. Do you not have any confidence in the ability of the Guard and reservists to do the job in Iraq?

US ground troops in South Korea are no deterrent to the nuclear threat from the North. They are essentially martyr-bait. Which is an abuse that Bush is trying to avert. Our presence there is no longer the deterrent it once was, so why not recognize that reality and move those troops to where they will be of greater use?

If Kerry wants us to embrace international cooperation in dealing with terrorist/WMD threats, a wise course to take would be to refocus our Asian allies' concentration on their own defensive interests. Our withdrawal will compel South Korea and Japan to increase their own involvement and become the full partners that they should be.

Steve, I have to disagree with you for two reasons.

First, under the current rules of campaign conduct, a Democrat, even one who is a decorated, combat veteran, cannot use a speech to the VFW to make a scathing attack. The VFW, ostensibly a non-partisan organization, is as much a Republican Party adjunct as the NRA.

If Kerry had put the wood to Bush in his speech, the SCLM would have been all over him for it. He might even have drawn boos and had some walk-outs. And that would have been the whole story for the next week or so.

Second, this is not an issue that is worth anything with any voters who are not already committed. Americans have no clue about military deployments. Even the ones that do have no idea how American military policy and American foreign policy relate to one another. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been no real examination of that relationship and Americans are neither ready nor equipped to have that discussion.

For the great mass of Bush supporters, as long as American military personnel are killing Arabs, they believe that things are going well. They have doubts about Kerry because they suspect, perhaps correctly, that whatever policies he intends, it will mean killing fewer Arabs, perhaps none at all. They are against this.

Kerry speech as the correct approach. Kerry, being a combat veteran himself, is going to have the actual lives of actual veterans foremost in his mind. Bush clearly does not.

Powell:

For the great mass of Bush supporters, as long as American military personnel are killing Arabs, they believe that things are going well. They have doubts about Kerry because they suspect, perhaps correctly, that whatever policies he intends, it will mean killing fewer Arabs, perhaps none at all. They are against this.

The idea is that we exterminate mass murderers before they can cause more harm to innocents. Your pompous formulation that pro-war Americans stand for indiscriminate killing of Arabs is flatly contradicted by the fact that our troops have taken great pains to limit their response to the provocations they face. They are trying not to kill innocents, but only the vermin who have it coming to them. If there were no political considerations to make in Najaf and with the Mahdis in general, we could have already destroyed them utterly. Keep that in mind when you insult our military's great forbearance in prosecuting this war.